by Henry Vogel
Lilla sniffed once, released me, and nodded. “Th-thanks. I’ve been holding that in for a long time.”
“It’s okay. All girls need a good cry every now and then.”
“Even you, Captain?”
“Even me. And call me Nancy.”
“Okay, Nancy.” Lilla gave me a friendly smile as we resumed our walk around the work area. “And I don’t really think you’re a mutineer.”
“Thank you, Lilla.” I put an arm around her shoulder and gave her a quick, walking hug. “Now, is there anything you’d like to ask me?”
Lilla bobbed her head. “How do you tell a boy you’re not interested in him that way?”
“We’re talking about Mauris, right?” She gave another head bob, so I continued, “Try telling him that you love him like a brother but not like a lover. Does Milla still love him that way?”
“Oh, yeah. She’s crazy about him and always glares at Mauris and me if Mauris pays more attention to me than her.”
“There’s your answer. Remind him Milla loves him and tell them both you want to get out of the way of their happiness.”
“That’s really good,” Lilla mused, not realizing I was quoting just about every soppy teenage romance story ever written.
“Milla gets Mauris all to herself, which she wants. You get to be with other boys, which you want. And Mauris gets the full attention of the girl who wants him, which he’ll figure out he wants after a while.”
“I’m so glad I met you, Nancy,” Lilla turned a happy face my way. “Is this what it’s like to have a mother?”
“You do have a mother, Lilla, and if I have anything to say about it, you’re going to see her again real soon.” We reached the wall with the big door into D Section and I changed the subject. “To make sure I can reunite you with her, though, I need to ask you for a big favor.”
“I’ll do it if I can,” Lilla said, her voice uncertain.
“I might need to defend myself from robots while I’m out and about.” I pointed to the blaster slung at her hip. “It would really help if I could take my gun with me.”
Lilla gave the idea careful thought. “Mauris might not like it, but I’m breaking up with him anyway. Will you promise to give it back when you return?”
“I will if I can do that without putting any of you or Sko in danger.”
She mulled that response for a few seconds, unbuckled the gun belt, and handed it to me. “I’ve seen you fight and you’re really good at it. You could have taken this away from me any time you wanted, especially when I was crying on your shoulder. Since you didn’t, that means I can trust you with it.”
I felt better as the weight of the gun belt settled on my hips. “I won’t betray your trust, Lilla.”
She gave me another quick hug. “I’ve got to go get the kids who are being promoted. Go hide next to the door. You’ll have plenty of time to slip out when it’s closing.”
Without another word, she headed back toward the work area. Five minutes later, she brought a boy and two girls—all about her own age, which I guessed at fifteen—to the door. Three robots met them and escorted the excited teenagers through the door.
A moment later, I slipped through the closing doors and out into the hallway. Turning left, I followed the robots and the teenagers into the unknown.
CHAPTER TEN
Promotion Ceremony
Following the robots escorting the three kids proved no more difficult than following the robots taking the engine from my starfighter to D Section. The robots never looked behind them and the teenagers were too excited to do anything other than speculate about their new home and the old friends they hoped to see again. Within minutes, I pulled out one of the pads and, other than keeping a casual eye on the group in front of me, gave the pad all of my attention.
My first surprise was the pad started up. For centuries, tech companies have bragged that their systems will last for a thousand years, if given proper care. Apparently, they’re right, though it helps that my pad probably stayed in that cabinet, untouched for close to two millennia. Even knowing the units were built to last through unknown generations of interstellar travel, I felt a twinge of admiration for the designers and manufacturers.
It took me a few minutes to puzzle out the interface. Fortunately, it relied on icons rather than written language. I didn’t know what most of those icons meant, but felt sure I could puzzle some of them out. No doubt a team of trained archeologists could translate two thousand year old text, but I was certain I could not.
Based solely on where the pads were stored—in a workshop—I assumed I held a maintenance pad. I wasn’t going to find officer’s logs, bridge controls, or a handy AI override button, but every maintenance pad I’d ever seen had a map of the ship.
As I tapped through menus, sometimes getting so lost in them I had to turn the pad off and then back on again to return to the main menu, the robots turned this way and that, leading the children farther and farther from the only home they’d known for years. After thirty minutes, the kids’ initial excitement subsided. Unaccustomed to walking long distances, they saved their breath for this journey of unknown length.
After forty minutes, I stumbled across a long list of similar-looking items. Hoping they were ancient work orders, I tapped one. The item opened to a display filled with incomprehensible stuff—but in the lower right corner I found my map. It expanded to fill the screen when I tapped it. Even better, I found several of the standard map control icons used on maps today. A friendly green person walked along a hallway, no doubt showing my current location. A big red arrow pointed back the way I’d come, probably telling me the location of the work order lay in the other direction. Ignoring the arrow, I scrolled ahead of the robots’ path, looking for their destination. It didn’t take long to find it.
A large room filled with row after row of symmetrical symbols was just a couple of a hundred meters straight ahead of the robots. Trying to figure out the room’s function, I zoomed in on the map. A few more details emerged, but I still had no idea what the room was for. Then a blinking icon appeared in the upper right corner of the screen. For once, I recognized the icon immediately. Whatever else had changed since the pad’s interface was programmed, a human eye still looks like an eye. Hoping for the best, I tapped the blinking icon.
To my immense satisfaction, a cam view replaced the map, complete with another blinking icon—which I assumed meant ‘map’ and quickly memorized—in the upper right corner. Even better, I recognized what I saw in the picture. Row upon row of liquid-filled troughs covered the floor at even intervals. Plants, recognizable food crops every one, sprouted from the troughs. Robots moved along the troughs, tending to the plants, which I found odd. The hydroponics plant was the obvious destination for the children. Why weren’t previously-promoted children tending to the plants, under the watchful eyes of a few dozen robots?
Sliding my fingers across the pad’s screen, I found I could sweep the cam around to face elsewhere. After a little scanning, I discovered a knot of a couple of dozen kids off in the distance. In the hopes of finding a closer cam, I returned to the map, scrolled the map toward the children, and tapped the eye again. I had to do that twice before I got a good view of the children and their robot keepers.
The kids all appeared to be about the same age, fourteen to sixteen. Many of them wore the same bored and sullen expressions you can find on teenagers throughout the Federation. They were gathered in an open space next to a vat the size of a big swimming pool. A translucent liquid filled the vat, making it impossible to figure out its depth. Some of the kids wrinkled their noses, as if the liquid had an unpleasant odor.
Ahead of me, one of the robots touched a contact plate and the door into the hydroponics station slid open. The door was a lot smaller than the big one into D Section and I realized it would close before I reached it at my current pace. With the robotic arm piece and my collection of wrist bands, I could certainly open the door again, but that might attrac
t attention. Throwing caution to the wind, I sprinted down the hallway as quietly as possible. Neither robots nor teenagers turned around and I slid through the closing doors with room to spare.
As expected, the robots escorted the three kids from D Section toward the rest of the kids. I hung back a bit, taking a chance to scan the hydroponics station.
Unlike the workshop, bright lights illuminated every corner of this room. Since a dark hydroponics station is a dead hydroponics station, this made perfect sense to me. What continued to puzzle me was the lack of children tending the plants. In every corner of the room, the AI’s oh so valuable robots rolled between the troughs, inspecting leaves, pruning, and generally doing exactly what robots are designed to do. So, why did the AI have the children brought here?
An unpleasant feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. Turning back to the pad, I tapped the map icon and then zoomed in on the large vat the children were gathered around. Another icon appeared and, with horror, I realized I’d found another symbol which hadn’t changed in thousands of years.
Right in the middle of the vat blinked a red skull and crossbones. The AI wasn’t promoting the children to new jobs, it was using an acid bath to break them down and replenish the nutrients in the hydroponics fluid.
Dropping the pad, I broke into a run. I drew my blaster and ejected the partially spent power pack. Sending an interstellar thought of thanks to the weapons instructor who insisted I learn to reload by feel and at a dead run, I shoved a fresh pack home and thumbed off the gun’s safety.
Only then did I take a second to consider why the robots hadn’t yet tossed any of the kids into the acid pool. The answer was obvious—the robots waited until all of the children were on hand and threw them all in at the same time. It also explained why the AI sent so many robots to guide such a small number of children. Their victims would have no time to resist or scatter in panic.
Outnumbered two dozen to one, I could only save a bare handful if the robots got their mechanical claws on the kids. I needed a distraction, something to alert the teenagers and distract the robots. One advantage to a one-person team is you never have to waste time assigning roles to teammates.
“Hey everyone.” I felt as if the huge room swallowed my yell, but the children and robots looked my way. “Scatter! The robots are going to throw you into the big pool. Run for your lives!”
The kids by the pool exchanged unsure glances, but none of them made a break for freedom. My warning might have fallen on deaf ears if the three kids from D Section hadn’t stopped walking to stare at me. The robots with them each grabbed one of the children, lifted them off the ground, and rolled on toward the pool. Spurred by some strange section of robotic control code, the rest of the robots rolled toward their children, claws extended.
Children screamed, ducked away from the reaching claws, and scattered. In seconds chaos reigned near the pool as robots chased the panicked children. It still would have all crashed down around me if the robots had simply snagged the closest teenager, but they didn’t. Each robot must have been assigned a specific child, as each robot single-mindedly chased after one child in particular. With kids running in all directions, the robots crashed into each other and neither robot yielded. But the robots weren’t the only ones running into each other.
Children caromed off of robots or other children and sprawled on the floor. Sometimes the kids made it back to their feet before their robot caught them, sometimes they didn’t. Robots hoisted struggling children above their heads and rolled toward the acid pool.
Meanwhile, I caught up with the robots from D Section. Leaping onto the back of the middle robot, I blasted its head off. The robots on either side surprised me by fighting back. To my horror, they each swung the child in their grasp at me like a club. I jumped away and one child passed harmlessly over the robot and me. Then I heard a sickening crunch and scream of pain as the second child bashed into the back of the decapitated robot.
Rolling after my landing, I fired twice at the robot whose child hit nothing, punching two holes in the robot’s chest. As it sagged, I spun on my knees to face the other robot. The robot lifted the child, blood streaming down her face, high over its head. Certain the girl couldn’t survive a blow like that, I snapped off five quick shots at the robot’s chest.
Springing to my feet, I charged on toward the pool. I flipped the piece of robotic arm toward the other girl. “Take care of your friend and get these other kids heading for the door. That arm piece will open the door.”
The girl caught the arm piece and stuttered, “O-okay.”
Ahead, I counted five robots carrying children toward the acid pool. I was too far away to reach them before the robots reached the pool, but also knew I had little chance of hitting them firing on the run. Just ahead of me, I spotted a small float pallet. Channeling half the adventure vids I’d watched as a child, I shoved the pallet into motion and then dove on top of it. The surface bobbed slightly, but its stabilizers brought that under control in less than a second. Still moving toward the pool at close to my running speed, I took a two handed grip on the blaster, aimed at the robot closest to the pool, and fired three times.
Without stopping to see the effect of my shots, I switched to the robot next closest to the pool and snapped off three more shots. By this time, a third robot was closer to the pool than either of the other two had been. My first shot caught the robot on the side but didn’t disable it. The second shot was closer to the robot’s chest, but the machine didn’t stop.
In horror, I watched the robot’s arms swing forward and release the boy struggling in its grasp. The boy screamed in terror as he arched over the acid bath. All too aware of the horrific death waiting in the pool, I switched my aim and pumped three shots into the boy. His body splashed into the acid and then bobbed to the surface. With a hiss, the acid slowly ate away at his remains.
Having no time to damn myself for failing the boy, I shifted aim to the fourth robot. The girl in its clutches screamed and struggled all the harder after seeing what happened to the boy. This time, I kept firing until the robot stopped moving. Swinging around toward the fifth robot, a sobbing girl held above its head, I found the pallet slowing and my line of fire blocked by panicked children running for the door behind us.
I rose to stand on the pallet, allowing me to fire over the heads of the kids. I screamed at them, “Don’t rock the pallet.”
My words got through their terror and the teenagers streamed around the pallet. I took careful aim and, once again, fired until the robot stopped moving. The girl in its arms was just over the edge of the pool, dangling a few meters above liquid death. Her sobs turned to screams and she wrapped her arms around one robotic arm just before the other claws released her.
“Arktu, save me!” the girl pleaded.
Leaping from the pallet, I sprinted past the last stragglers running for the door. The robots, mostly untangled from each other, rolled my way. I fired nonstop into the crowd of robots, stopping some and forcing others to roll out of my way.
I reached the edge of the pool, dropped the blaster, and caught the girl’s legs. “It’s okay, I’ve got you. Just relax and I’ll pull you to safety.”
The girl stopped kicking, allowing me to get a better grip on her. “Now, I need you to let go of the robot.”
The girl shook her head violently. “No. I’ll fall in!”
“I won’t let that happen, honey.” I used the soothing voice that worked on my young niece, hoping to calm the girl down.
Once again, the girl shook her head, but didn’t say anything.
Time for another tack. “What’s your name?”
“Kath.”
“A lovely name for a lovely girl, Kath.” Time to try again. “You do want to get down, don’t you, Kath?”
Kath sniffed, getting her tears under control, and nodded her head.
“Then you’re going to have to trust me.”
Kath’s gaze met mine and I smiled as brightly as possible
. “Are you ready, Kath?” She nodded again. “Good. I’m ready to pull you to safety. Just let go.”
Closing her eyes, Kath released her grip. She yelped as she dropped a bit, but then I swung her around and away from the pool. “You’re over the floor now, Kath. Take a look for yourself. I’ll put you down when you’re ready.”
She opened one eye and then the other. Smiling for the first time, she said, “You can put me down now.”
I lowered her to the floor just in time to see a robot rolling right toward us. Shoving the girl away, I shouted, “Run for the door, Kath.”
The robot’s claws grabbed my arms and hoisted me into the air. Arktu’s voice boomed from the robots. “You’ve thwarted me for the final time, Captain Nancy Martin!”
Then the robot swung me out over the pool of acid.
Every starfighter pilot accepts the possibility of his own death. Perhaps it will be a sudden death in a ball of expanding flame. Or maybe it will be a slow death, gasping as my oxygen supply dwindles away to nothing. Hell, it might even be a slip in the shower. Long ago, I accepted the possibility I would die a violent death.
But, of all the ways I thought I might die, being dissolved alive in a pool of acid never once crossed my mind. Now, firmly held in a robot’s grasp as it drew back its arms to hurl me into the acid pool, my mind recoiled from the idea. As I struggled futilely to break free of the metal claws, a scream of pure terror ripped from my throat.
“I feel no pain, Captain Nancy Martin, but I have observed the death throes of many I’ve ordered cast into the acid.” Arktu’s voice still boomed from the robot, though it sounded tinny and far away to me now. “It looks like a very unpleasant way to die—and I shall enjoy watching you struggle and scream.”
Drawn back fully, the robot paused for just a second. No doubt Arktu drawing every last bit of sadistic pleasure from my terror. As the robot’s arms started forward, my ears filled with a strange popping sound which went on and on.